The Stage review Romeo and Juliet, 2 May 2002
'rom&jul'
The Shaw
British Touring Shakespeare
A couple of spots, comfy sofa, and a healthy dollop of ham are all British Touring Shakespeare needs for the most inspired rendition of Romeo and Juliet you are likely to see. Reverential where it should be, disreputable where it should not, this is no simple re-reading but a full-blooded return to Shakespeare's original spirit.
Raked by Kevin James's bold swathes of lighting lyrically tracking each shift in mood the minimalism cannot disguise the immense inventiveness of director Miles Gregory's vision. Street gags and drama weave in and out of Desperately Seeking Susan and Quadraphenia. Accordingly, the order of dress is bovver boots and T-shirts, the language coarse estuary, the apothecary a drugs dealer, and the fight scene a Stanley knife wrestling bout. As Nurse, heavily-stubbled Tobias Beer pulls off a comic creation of near genius even if his ad-libs are not always appropriate.
David Barnaby and Jean Marlow make a powerful yet mellow Lord and Lady Capulet, while young bloods Tybalt and Mercutio are roles to revel in, courtesy of Tom Mallaburn and William Finkenrath respectively. Asa Joel turns in a thoughtful Friar Lawrence as besandalled, frontline community worker.
The trade-off of such equally real-life and larger than life characters is that the love story is clipsed. Mike Rogers' Romeo and Lucia Latimer's Juliet, hard as they strive, cannot compete with the comedy and violence wheeling around them. Our star crossed lovers appear oddly bland - unhelped by their problematic projection (particularly Latimer) and lack the youth to exude the prerequisite bloom of innocent discovery that makes the final death scene so tragic.
Nick Awde
